2017 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, 12-14 May

[ClarkBT11]

Guys
what do you think about Alonso's Best lap he was matching vettel' and Hamilton's at the end of the race?

Just 3/10ths off Hamilton's time. Impressive stuff. I wonder if Hamilton and Vettel could have gone quicker if needed, however.

well they were "fighting" for P1 or almost and compared with 2016 BL they were fast so was Alonso
tyres were used in both cases
it looks promising specially if you have into account Q2 AND Q3!!!

The only reason Alonso's laptime was so close to the front runners is because he pitted with 13 laps to go and Hamilton and Vettel pitstops were 20 laps before. Hamilton set the fastest lap on 28 lap old softs, I reckon Hamilton or Vettel would of been at least 1.5 seconds quicker with the same tyre Alonso used for his fastest lap time.

[notsofast]

DRS is flawed, yes, but it's sooooo much better than the Trulli-train days of yore when a slightly slow car could hold up half of the field for half of the race.

Instead of DRS, maybe F1 simply needs to change the points scoring: each car is awarded 1 point for each second it finishes the race ahead of the next car. With such a scheme, it simply won't pay to hold up another car.

[sosic2121]

The one trick Ferrari missed, which only occurred to me long after the race had finished, is that they should have pitted Vettel for mediums as soon as the VSC was called, then brought him in again on the next lap for softs.
Otherwise, the loss of Raikkonen following the collision with Bottas gave Mercedes a significant tactical advantage that Ferrari weren't able to counter.

Nice idea. Only if they did that Vet would end some 20+ seconds behind Ham and then Ham would pit next lap under VSC.
But Ferrari could pit Vet from M to S on last vsc lap.
Obviously, Ferrari thought Mercedes can't go to the end of S.

[PlatinumZealot]

I think it's fair to assume that the longer wheelbase Mercedes is always likely to be a more stable aerodynamic platform in long corners -I.e. Smoother - but the shorter, nimbler (possibly still lighter?) Ferrari will be a livelier car that is able to be thrown around a bit more. imo the style Lewis has to use with that car is a smooth one - it's too long to respond well to lively inputs - and vice verse with Seb in the Ferrari.

Nevertheless, I have maintained all year and still maintain that the Mercedes is the slightly faster car - not just in quali but in all conditions. The only time I've seen demonstrable a proof of the Mercedes not managing its tyres as well is in Australia (and Bottas with the wrong pressures in Bahrain) - otherwise I think it looks pretty equal.

In Spain Ferrari were quicker on fast corners and slower in slow ones; again - and I think you can see it - I think Mercedes was running more wing. They can afford more drag because they still have more power and perhaps even more so this weekend, when I think it's possible they could run higher power for longer (at least with Lewis).

So I think the Ferrari has a better downforce/drag ratio and that's allowing them to almost bridge the gap to Mercedes, despite still losing out a bit on power.

However, I also think there are two things suggesting they'll be stronger in Monaco:

i) if they were running less wing, they have more to add when they go to max df in Monaco

ii) I still can't see that limo turning well in the tight confines of the principality; they may have been good in s3 in Barcelona but I think it owes much to the wing level. Plus, and more importantly, S3 in Barcelona ain't Monaco - i just can't see the Mercedes working well at the hairpin or even in Anthony Nogues. I actually think the - shorter still - Red Bull will close in and put pressure on the Mercedes, with Ferrari out in front (at least with Seb; can imagine Kimi "struggling with the front end" as ever).

So I think the Mercedes is still the faster package but it's been designed to work at the majority of circuits; Monaco's an outlier.

The video I posted countered all of the perceptions you have about the two cars. Watch it and tell me what you think.

https://streamable.com/nvsmo

[Just_a_fan]

DRS is flawed, yes, but it's sooooo much better than the Trulli-train days of yore when a slightly slow car could hold up half of the field for half of the race.

Instead of DRS, maybe F1 simply needs to change the points scoring: each car is awarded 1 point for each second it finishes the race ahead of the next car. With such a scheme, it simply won't pay to hold up another car.

So in Spain, Hamilton would have got 3 points for winning (3.5s ahead of Vettel) and Vettel would have got 75 points for second place (75s ahead of Ricciardo).

In a two-horse race like this season, the champion is likely to be the driver who finishes second most often, not the driver who wins most races. Hamilton and Vettel will be trying not to win once they've stretched out the lead over 3rd place. Hell, 3rd place could end up winning by virtue of being close to 1st and 2nd but well ahead of 4th. Indeed, the title could be won by a midfielder who stays well ahead of the slow guys at the back. The possibilities for the champion driver and team being mid-field also-rans are enormous.

Um, that's just about the oddest idea I've heard in F1.

[Artur Craft]

Now if only the aero rules could be simplified so that third place isn't a minute behind...

Aero simplified? what about the complexity of the engines? It's the thing that's been hurting F1 since 2014. Aero has always been complicated since many years now.

It's no coincidence that the teams fighting for everything that matters are the only manufacturers with good engines. If Mercedes or Ferrari believes their aero is superior, then why not supply their engine to Red Bull? Why refuse and throw away the millions of another customer?

I have to say, DRS really ruins some races!

Yes the ones that Vettel gets overtaken using it. When he passes another with a much less powerfull engine aboard even, say in China or so, using it I didn't hear you

See, this is the kind of stuff that's not good on the forum. Vettel's overtake on China had almost nothing to due with DRS. He outbraked somebody on the outside after successfully being able to remain close to Ricciardo through T1, 2 and 3.

I'm not a fan of any driver, btw. Hamilton has his merits too because I don't think it was easy to get as close as he did on those last few corners, even accounting his superior tyres, but the overtaking itself was a boring DRS fly-by.

[Artur Craft]

Mechanical grip and engine power. We still have that advantage. But Ferrari has better downforce and tyre management. We should have the advantage in Monaco.

Actually, Ferrari have better aero but both teams ran similar levels of downforce, on Barcelona. Ferrari's aero is superior because they had better top speed despite their inferior PU, which implies on significanly lower drag for the same downforce level.

The evidence that both had similar levels of downforce can be seen on the video below and on my personal data of their average speeds through Campsa that can be seen on the graph, under it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fno5qUO5Rfo

Bottas' average speed was 0.35km/h faster than Vettel's, whose average speed was just 1.2km/h faster than Hamilton's, which would imply on a 0.01s advantage(exactly the error claimed in the video) but I suppose the fact Hamilton used more of the curb(than Vettel) really put them even closer together

This shows how minimum speeds are misleading as Bottas had a min speed 5km/h higher than Vettel and Hamilton.

[Artur Craft]

Only last year Lewis had problem in qualifying which allowed Riccardo to take pole.

He ran on Q3, he just didn't have speed for pole as he never had at Monaco(his sole pole came in a session where Rosberg was again faster but had problems after his first Q2 run which was much faster than Hamilton's, as you seem to account for that). Red Bull pole was totally genuine as was Ferrari's 2015 Singapore one. Mercedes was never really dominant on these tighter tracks and even on Singapore 2014, the Ferraris and Red Bulls were incredibly close

Btw, regardless of which car will be better at Monaco, both tittle contenders aren't excelent drivers there. They often were slower than their team mates and if Kimi and Bottas have good a weekend(at this point it's hard to count on that specially on Kimi's case), they can steal the show.

Up until q2 Lewis was clearly faster
Until his car gave up. And that gave Riccardo the pole.

a) Lewis car gave before q3 and he could only manage 1 attempt at pole with furl for 7 laps in the car

Are you on a mission to hype Hamilton? Q2 means nothing for the top cars, just a formality. Hamilton was just pushing more than the others and, on Q3, when everybody is 100%, he didn't have the speed for it.

Rosberg had Alonso's traffic on his first lap, everybody can face little problems but the fact remains that both Mercedes cars had Q3 laps and couldn't be faster than Ricciardo. Hamilton's car did not "give up" and it was not what you implied on your previous post(as if he had car problems and couldn't run at all). He had his shot(7 laps of fuel? another one of those typical made up excuses, even if not made up by you. Even if true, it would mean everybody had that on their first Q3 laps as Hamilton had on Barcelona, couple of days ago, and that was his fastest lap ) but couldn't take pole on the fastest car of the field, this I agree with you, even if Red Bull was very close.

I'm a little confused here, watching the onboard footage of Hamilton and Vettel shows that the footage of their telemetry and their onboard footage doesn't tally up, looking at their onboard laps Vettel doesn't have anywhere near the gap that he has on their telemetry footage.

http://youtu.be/6gX_aqx-P3s

Yes, I noticed that too. That's why I took note of their speeds through Campsa to calculate the average and see how it compares to the measurement in the video that I posted before. Curiously, as I posted before, they add up and are in perfect agreement. However, I do think that virtual lap thing is not 100% accurate and even the lines are not exactly the ones that were driven. Steven's points about it are very good too.

Btw, that video was already taken down by FOM (luckily I saved a copy)

PS: Have I broke the record for the most posts in a row? Sorry if I was eventually rude, but I have very little patience with fanboyism and f1technical used to be an oasis among F1 discussions.

[Hammerfist]

I want to bring the attentio of you all to this qualifying analysis if not posted already. What does it say about the engine power, traction and relative low med high speeds of the cars?

https://streamable.com/nvsmo

The ferrari seemed to have better top end acceleration and downforce. Amazing thru the high speed corners and the wider lines that Vettel could take.
Really, the Ferrari was faster here and the pole was vettels but he screwed up the exit chicane as he said. What i am excited about is Mercedes low speed performance for Monaco.

That is truly the best simulation video I ever saw. I wish we saw that on sky every race. VEry interesting to see how Vettel uses most of the curbs in his exits while Hamilton does not. Hamilton also likes to take shallower lines, probably because he is sort of drifting into the turn and does not need to go as wide as VEttel. Amazing.

The only thing I have a problem with is that this is a sim of Hamilton's 1st Q3 lap against Vettel's 2nd Q3 lap and it does not take into account the track's evolution. In Hamilton's final Q3 lap he was actually faster in the first and second sectors compared to his pole lap. He just messed up Sector 3. Really if he was able to replicate the S3 time he did on his first lap, pole wouldn't have been as close. He would have gotten it by more than 3 tenths.
Here are the sector times for Hamilton's first Q3 lap
21.807
29.695
27.647

Here are the sector times for Hamilton's second Q3 lap.

21.730
29.537
27.907

This was a poor final lap from Hamilton and he almost gave away pole.He was on pace to break deep in the 18s. So the gap we see on the video in the first 2 sectors was not representative. Hamilton was much faster than Vettel, which is why he was ahead in all of the qualifying runs before that final one.

[siskue2005]

The one trick Ferrari missed, which only occurred to me long after the race had finished, is that they should have pitted Vettel for mediums as soon as the VSC was called, then brought him in again on the next lap for softs.
Otherwise, the loss of Raikkonen following the collision with Bottas gave Mercedes a significant tactical advantage that Ferrari weren't able to counter.

Nice idea. Only if they did that Vet would end some 20+ seconds behind Ham and then Ham would pit next lap under VSC.
But Ferrari could pit Vet from M to S on last vsc lap.
Obviously, Ferrari thought Mercedes can't go to the end of S.

That is no possible both compund to be run by the car for at least one racing lap. SC or VSC period won't count.

[Gilles27Kimi7]

DRS is flawed, yes, but it's sooooo much better than the Trulli-train days of yore when a slightly slow car could hold up half of the field for half of the race.

Instead of DRS, maybe F1 simply needs to change the points scoring: each car is awarded 1 point for each second it finishes the race ahead of the next car. With such a scheme, it simply won't pay to hold up another car.

Well, it would work if it's a reverse scoring system: the champion has the least points. In that way Vettel would still lead at the moment, Hamilton being second by 20 points or so.
But it wouldn't work well with this formula "Save your engine"

[seventhsin]

The quality of some of the posts in these race threads is a far cry from the technical threads. Some of the last few pages have absolutely nothing to do with Catalunya, its quite frustrating to sift through pages posting of Monaco in years past, Rosberg, DRS, point systems, calling each other names and squabbling over which driver and car is faster than the other.

[iotar__]

- It's funny to drag DRS into performance and lost win in Spain at all, it's 100 times worse after an overtake like that. Have you even seen it? Ham was close enough very early on the straight, it was mostly about corner exit, following closely, lapping cars etc. = being quick when it matters.

- Lost lead was quickly followed by radio posing since radio posing, between the races heroics, ignoring 99% of reality and media cheerleading is a substitute for on track quality.

- Drivers know it well, when they mess up instead of driving they jump on with excuses, no, it "wasn't impossible" as pace before and after showed, then it was "Massa again" because he didn't disappear mid-corner .

- Kvyat is right: Magnussen got the puncture himself. Sainz is not that good, another radio racer doing little behind KM and PV.

[SameSame]

Now if only the aero rules could be simplified so that third place isn't a minute behind...

Aero simplified? what about the complexity of the engines? It's the thing that's been hurting F1 since 2014. Aero has always been complicated since many years now.

It's no coincidence that the teams fighting for everything that matters are the only manufacturers with good engines. If Mercedes or Ferrari believes their aero is superior, then why not supply their engine to Red Bull? Why refuse and throw away the millions of another customer?

I'm not sure if you can see the wood from the tree's. Please explain the difference in pace between Merc and Force India. Yes some of it is Mechanical, but it is mostly down to aero.

You do realise that more than half the grid has the same engines as Merc and Ferrari yet they are nowhere? Its aero.

[Artur Craft]

The quality of some of the posts in these race threads is a far cry from the technical threads. Some of the last few pages have absolutely nothing to do with Catalunya, its quite frustrating to sift through pages posting of Monaco in years past, Rosberg, DRS, point systems, calling each other names and squabbling over which driver and car is faster than the other.

I agree that discussing Monaco previous GPs(I didn't start it) doesn't have much to do with this thread but discussing the next race there is natural(DRS, point systems and etc are OT but GP threads always leads to this stuff). Talking about which car is faster is pertinent to any GP thread and the most technical post of this whole thread was the one in which I presented the graphs of the drivers through an aero corner to assess their downforce. But all in all, race threads will always be less technical than the proper technical threads.

Because I know that many members, like you(and me too), don't like the OT, I'll not keep feeding it. But discussing which car was faster on Barcelona, does belong to this race thread.I don't even know how can you claim otherwise.

@GPR-A, I'm not here to hype nor bash any driver. I try to be as fair as I can. Not many people gave credit to Hamilton for his overtake. Most just threw away into the DRS's account. I did and that shows that I favour no driver, as I support none of them.